What are we to do with these spring days that are now fast coming on? Early this morning the sky was gray, but if you go to the window now you are surprised and lean your cheek against the latch of the casement. The sun is already setting, but down below you see it lighting up the face of the little girl who strolls along looking about her, and at the same time you see her eclipsed by the shadow of the man behind overtaking her. And then the man has passed by and the little girl’s face is quite bright.
Franz Kafka, “Absent-minded Window-gazing,” (translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)
Year : 2021
Title : Thousand Caves @ Absent-minded Window-gazing
Media : Generated Animation
Statement :
Thousand Caves is a program that generates short animations in a virtual non-Euclidean space. This animated incident is an adaptation of Franz Kafka's story, "Absent-minded Window-gazing", written in 1912. Kafka told how he was observing a girl through a window, and how her face was eclipsed by the shadow of a man behind overtaking her. Even though it was a short story, a space had already been created with just several sentences. The geometric relationships between people were established. Changes of light and shadow were also illustrated. However, everything was still ambiguous. It allows many possibilities to re-create the space, as well as Kafka's vision at that moment. There even could be infinite scenarios if the space was non-Euclidean, where both the sun rays and lines of sights were curved. Here is how Thousand Caves generates the space.
The program will run continuously to produce new animated sequences in around 15 seconds length. Beside the resulting animations, the real-time processing of the generation could also be presented to audiences in another screen. It shows the generation of various parameters including walking path of the man, body shapes and face features of the girl, illuminating direction of the sunrays and its curved form, curve coefficients of Kafka's lines of sights, as well as the analysis of the eclipse on the girl. There are other details to be considered in the generation, but on the whole, frame by frame of the animation is created after attaining a positive result of analysis.